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Monday, 15 April 2013

ISO 14001 & OHSAS 18001

The essential difference between ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 is that ISO 14001 focuses on managing your organization's impact on the external environment, while OHSAS 18001 focuses on managing your organization's internal environment to ensure a safe and healthy workplace.

Structurally, the two standards are essentially identical. The requirements are essentially identical. Consequently, the processes and documentation needed to implement and certify to ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 are essentially the same. Only the intent and focus are different.

Although there are many similarities, there are two areas where the standards are distinctly different.

A safety management system that conforms to 18001:2007 requires an organization to conduct a hazard/risk analysis (14001:2004 requires an aspect/impact analysis) and to determine appropriate controls. Unlike the aspect/impact analysis, the 18001 standard requires risk reduction considerations according to a 5 step hierarchy-elimination, substitution, engineering controls, signage/warnings and/or administrative controls and lastly personal protective equipment. It is important to understand that the intent is to reduce risks utilizing the highest measure in the hierarchy where possible and not to simply use PPE in all cases. Perhaps a combination of engineering controls and PPE would be warranted. In each risk reduction analysis careful consideration should be given to the best option available to the organization.

A second major difference between ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 is the need for organizations to ensure employee participation in specific areas of the management system. Involvement should include participation in the hazard/risk and determining controls process, incident investigations, and development and review of policies and objectives. In addition, Employees (workers) must be consulted on any changes that affect their OH&S as well as representation on OH&S matters. Additionally, consultation with contractors is required where changes that affect their OH&S. And finally, it is important to note that the standard points out that the OH&S belongs to the workers and/or the contractors.

The OHSMS and the EMS can effectively be combined in one management system where the common clauses and procedures are shared. Some companies consider this when creating the documentation to simplify the implementation for an organization.

Rather than have parallel (duplicate) Manuals and other Documentation they note where the user can just incorporate the OH&S and EMS requirements to the manual, procedures and instructions.

The information provided here is excellent and given me an idea about OHSAS 18001 Standard Documents for and how it helped in developing occupational health and safety management system in any organizations.

Hi Hector! Thanks for sharing such an informative post about the difference between ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001. That type of information is quite rare to find nowadays, so I'm really thankful that you decided to share it with us. Hopefully, more people will stumble upon your blog, since everyone must have at least a little bit of knowledge with regard to certifications. Good going!